Also known as packet prioritization system, this feature is a patented technology used to manage network traffic which delays some or all datagrams to bring them into compliance with a desired traffic profile. Traffic Prioritization is used to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth for some kinds of packets by delaying other kinds. If a link becomes saturated to the point where there is a significant level of contention (either upstream or downstream) latency can rise substantially. Traffic Prioritization can be used to prevent this from occurring and keep latency in check. Traffic Prioritization provides a means to control the volume of traffic being sent into a network in a specified period, or the maximum rate at which the traffic is sent. This system will prevent any one user from being able to access 100% of the Internet connection at any given time. This prevents an abusive user, or user with a virus from monopolizing all of the office Internet traffic. 

Within this section, you will need to specify the following settings

• Status  - Disable to turn off traffic prioritization. 
  

  Warning  Disabling may cause unexpected behavior on high-bandwidth clients. We recommend leaving traffic prioritization enabled when not troubleshooting.

  
  

• Profile  - The level of aggressiveness for traffic shaping. Choose normal unless you are experiencing poor VoIP quality. Normal = interface is limited to 100% of the current speed tests; Moderate = 80%; Aggressive = 60%. By knowing the streaming speeds it allows us to automatically calculate how much bandwidth to give to each user and each service. 
  

How do you determine the packets that are to be prioritized? How does it affect my network?

--Each packet are inspected to determine its type. Once that has been found, the unit then cross-references it with our pre-defined list of priorities. Packets that are streamed such as VoIP, Videos, and Audio streams are placed high on the priority list; while packets such as Web traffic are placed relatively low.

Although your ISP may promise up to 50Mbps or 100Mbps, this is often called “Burst Speed”. Burst Speed only lasts a few seconds and makes a speed test look great. We use a proprietary system to check for your most consistent download speed. When your SimpleWAN Appliance is booted up, a large download and upload speed test is run to produce your actual consistent speed.

Traffic Prioritization uses this information to set speed and VOIP and realtime applications reservations as needed.

Burst speed is what your ISP advertises to make their network appear much faster than it actually is. Burst speed is great for streaming services with large buffers like Netflix, and it even makes online gaming a faster experience. However, due to the constant changes in speed, it makes services like VOIP have Jitter and call dropping issues.